It's not uncommon for rivals to bash one another, so Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page took a couple of jabs at Facebook and Apple in a recent interview.

In an interview with Wired, Page discussed how he wants Google to come up with some "moon shots," or far-out ideas such as the company's self-driving vehicles that recently achieved 30,000 accident-free miles.

However, Page also took the opportunity to throw a few insults at rivals Facebook and Apple. Google's social network, Google+, has been working to gain the amount of users that Facebook has while Google's Android operating system competes with Apple's iOS.

While Page recognizes that Facebook is a heavyweight in the social arena, he said, "They're also doing a really bad job on their products … we're actually doing something different [from Facebook]. I think it's outrageous to say that there's only space for one company in these areas."

Page may be a little sore that Google, which launched in 2011, hasn't quite lived up to the hype of it potentially being a Facebook rival. There are currently 500 million registered users on Google+ and only about 125 million are active monthly (compared to Facebook's one billion monthly active users as of October 2012).

Rather than become a Facebook rival, though, it looks more like Google+ has become a product incorporated into Google's search.

In November of last year, Google's Vice President of Product Bradley Horowitz spoke with Business Insider about Google+, also taking a jab at Facebook. Specifically, he targeted the social network's use of advertisements, where they're forced into people's news feeds. He even went as far as comparing Facebook ads to a guy with a sandwich board popping in between a father and his daughter during an important conversation.

"We don't have to make next week's payroll by jamming ads at users," said Horowitz.

In the recent Wired interview, Page also had something to say about Apple's product practices. While Apple is another huge player in the mobile space, Page thinks its products are limited.

"You know, we always have these debates: we have all this money, we have all these people, why aren't we doing more stuff?" said Page. "You may say that Apple only does a very, very small number of things, and that's working pretty well for them. But I find that unsatisfying."

Earlier this week, it was reported that Google's Nexus 7 tablet market share was greater in Japan than Apple's iPad. Market research firm BCN conducted a survey in Japan last December, and out of 2,400 consumer electronics stores in Japan, the iPad had 40.1 percent of the market while Google's Nexus 7 claimed 44.4 percent.

my point was, what's shameful about selling ads vs selling at a huge margin?both their goals are to make money. You harp on Google for selling close to cost and trying to make up with ad revenue, but yet think it's fine when you take it up the ass with Apple's pricing?

It's illegal to sell below cost, but when you are offsetting that with an intent to recoup through other revenue, its' not "predatory pricing" anymore.

There's nothing wrong with selling advertising. It's a well established business.

What's not so easy to stomach is being fed advertising by a company that wants to know everything about you. They want to mine your emails, your photos, your contacts, your schedules, your contacts, your social interactions, your app usage, where your home is, your SSID, what you search for on the internet and the websites you visit, your personal documents, your business documents.

And they want to do all this for you, for free.

I'm doing a fairly good job confusing the algorithms though. The shit advertisements that are served up to me have precisely zero chance of ever getting clicked on.

Google doesn't take any information people aren't feeding it. If you don't want Google to mine your information, don't give it to them. Use another search engine, another email system, another mobile phone platform, etc, etc.

The fact is people derive value from Google's free services and in return Google gets paid by showing targeted ads. TV networks have been doing this for many years. Retail stores, grocery stores, etc. have been collecting information about you for years too in exchange for coupons and such.

Except I still have concerns of this issues it could cause for all of us, whether we use it or not, further down the line. I think for a single organisation to know so much about the collective could be benign but it could also have unforeseen consequences.

Much better to have several healthy competing businesses so the information is spread about a bit and each guardian of that information is blind to each of the others. In turn each of those organisations should not have *too* varied an interest in sectors outside of search / advertising.

For the record I also avoid loyalty card schemes, coupons and anything else that allows a single organisation to know "too much" about me.

quote: Google is playing with fire and has lined themselves up for a huge lawsuit over giving away Android for free, hard to compete with free.

Android is released under an open source license. Also, giving away stuff for free is not illegal in any way, shape or form.

Microsoft compete with Linux which is free. Has any sued Mr Torvalds now that he's a US citizen? Oracle give away Java, VitualBox and MySQL for free. Are they being sued? Microsoft gives away a free antivirus suite as a I recall. They being sued by everyone???

Dont take this guy seriously, he gets bent out of shape on any company that competes with Apple and cant handle anyone that posts anything negative about Apple. Just another one of those "Apple can do no wrong" types. He's fun to mess with though, given his mental block regarding Apple.

Apple could not survive on it's iAd revenue which is only a minuscule fraction as profitable vs the ad-giant that is Google. Google is bent out of shape now that both Apple and Facebook are competing in the same space. If Facebook and Apple were integrated with Google ads, you can bet your ass they would all be playing nice.

Google started as a search engine, and branched out into a ton of other things, but almost everything they do is given for free with the ad revenue being the companies main income. It's not like that is a surprise, or they ever tried to hide it.

I don't give a crap about Google, or any other company for that matter. I care about what products I can buy and what prices they are available at. Right now I like Android because right now, I can get more product and more features for less money. Money isnt really an issue, I just want the best I can get and that is Android. That may change, you never know what Apple might release, but looking at the current lineup, not a single product has equal features to an Android counterpart. I have made a line in the sand. Never again will I buy anything with a screen that is less than 1920x1080. Not a phone, not a tablet, not a laptop or a desktop LCd, or a TV for that matter. There are some seriously sweet 5 inch 1920x1080 Android models out and coming out in the next few months. Apple has nothing in the ballpark.

A large screen Apple phone would sell massive quantities. They would probably go double, so 2272x1280? I dunno though, seems unlikely. The rumours all over the place are a smaller cheaper version. In itself that is a good idea too. If I were Apple, I would do a smaller cheaper, and a bigger better. The iPhone nano and the iPhone MONDO! LOL

quote: I don't give a crap about Google, or any other company for that matter. I care about what products I can buy and what prices they are available at.

Fine. Don't read stuff that doesn't interest you, better yet don't comment on it. Some of us are interested in broader issues, what are the dynamics and trends at play in the tech markets, what sort of different business strategies are the big tech players pursuing and which of those different strategies are successful and why?

You think Android is best for meeting your needs - fine. Other people prefer RIM or Windows Phone, or iOS that's also fine. Personally I find people reporting which products they like or dislike and why the least interesting and informative aspect of tech discussions, not least because the people who participate in tech discussions are so completely unrepresentative of the broader community of consumers but also because such comments and debates result in almost no one changing their minds.

Personally places like these forums are the last place I would go for advice about which tech product to use. What I am interested in, as I have been interested for over forty years, is how is technology changing, why and what directions. People talking about why they personally prefer Apple or Android seems so tedious, repetitive and pointless. Why should I care about why you buy the things you do, you don't care about why I do. Why tens of millions of people buy one product or another, however, is an interesting question but not one that is often helped by personal anecdote.

What is it that makes the obviously sensible choice of 1080p for a TV necessary for a phone? Is it practicality or just some psychological decision?

Don't concern yourself with Apple not having anything of that resolution in the offing, you really are a small minority of people who 1) have a need for that resolution when you clearly cannot resolve it with your own eyesight and 2) even bother trying to do anything that necessitates that kind of resolution on something so inconvenient to us.

Like you say, you have desktops and laptops and tablets. The first two are where "features" count and actual productivity is achieved.

I admit it's a bit of overkill but better that than underkill. I have a 1280 by 720 phone now and I would like higher resolution. The reason being that i often remote into servers while I'm out and about to take care of quick problems and I need hi res to make it easier. when your remote into servers it's easy enough to pinch to zoom a high res session, but its a pain in the ass to scroll over and move the sidebar down on a low resolution one. It drives me nuts.Since today than droids are 5 inches and 1080 p that's the next thing I'll get and I won't be going lower. I don't really particularly like 16 by 9and it's not really a line in the sand based on the spec it's just based on what's available today. Wanting more than 1280 by 720 Leaves me 1920 x 1080. 1440x900 would do the job fine but it doesn't exist on a phone or tablet and its too low for a laptop

Android is open source and free just like various Linux distros. Is Linus Torvalds going to be dragged into court over giving the Linux kernel source away?

The fact is, Google is not a monopoly as people like to claim they are. They have a large market share in search, but there's also Bing, Yahoo and many, many other global, regional and local search engines throughout the globe.

Google is playing the long game, selling devices at a low margin and making up the difference in their services ecosystem, ads, etc. They are investing in Google's future by gaining market share. They aren't driving anyone out of business.